If you’re a Linux guru, you’ve probably already heard of ‘top’, which is a simple process monitoring program which runs in command line. However, if you find top a bit boring and like the idea of a more colorful and interesting UI, ‘htop’ might be for you. Here’s a screenshot of htop in action:

Advantages of using htop include:

Colour meters show you at a glance if CPU load, memory usage etc. is within acceptable levels

Supports user interaction using the mouse as well as keyboard

Sort process list by CPU%, MEM%, time running etc., and in ascending or descending order

Fully customizable according to your needs

Help menu which lists all possible commands (useful for beginners)

Installation:

Before we can actually install htop, we firstly need to install Repoforge (previously RPMForge), which will act as a repository from which we can get the files.